Psychometric Properties of Metacognitive Awarness of Reading Strategy Inventory MARSI.pdf

7/27/2019 Psychometric Properties of Metacognitive Awarness of Reading Strategy Inventory MARSI.pdf

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www.ccsenet.org/jedp Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology Vol. 1, No. 1; December 2011

Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 3

Psychometric Properties of Meta-cognitive Awareness of Reading

Strategy Inventory

Connie Qun Guan

School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University

3663 ZhongShanBeiLu, Shanghai 200062, China

E-mail: [email protected]

Alysia D. Roehrig

College of Education, Florida State University

3204E Stone Building 1114 W. Call Street, Tallahassee FL 32306, USA

Tel: 1-850-644-8781 E-mail: [email protected]

Rihana S. Mason

Department of Psychology, Emmanuel College

181 Spring St. PO BOX 129, Franklin Springs GA 30639, USA

Tel: 1-404-593-8588 E-mail: [email protected].

Wanjin Meng (Corresponding author)

Department of Psychology and Special Edu, China National Institute for Educational Research

46 BeiSanHuan Zhong Road, Beijing 100088, China

Tel: 86-10-6200-3358 E-mail: [email protected]

Received: September 19, 2011 Accepted: October 24, 2011 Published: December 30, 2011

doi:10.5539/jedp.v1n1p3 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/jedp.v1n1p3

Abstract

The construct validity of the Meta-cognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI; Mokhtari &

Reichard, 2002) was tested with 189 college students, and its convergent validity with reading comprehension

ability was investigated. Reading ability was assessed using self-report and standardized measures. Results

demonstrate weak construct validity of the MARSI, suggesting that the current form of the MARSI is not

appropriate for use with students who are very proficient in reading (i.e., grade level equivalents beyond 12th

grade). More theoretically-based quantitative and qualitative studies using the MARSI are warranted.

Keywords: Meta-cognitive knowledge, College students, Reading comprehension, Test validity

1. Introduction

There is an urgent need for meta-cognition research related to reading in the college population. In the field of

education, it is a well-acknowledged fact that college students rarely have deep comprehension of their required

textbooks (Graesser, Person, & Hu, 2002). Research has demonstrated that poor readers differ from good readers

in their use of meta-cognitive strategies (Baker & Brown, 1984a, 1984b; Gambrell & Heathington, 1981; Wong

& Jones, 1982). Professors of remedial reading and mainstream courses could be provided richer information to

guide their instruction given the following: a) an understanding of how meta-cognitive knowledge and reading

comprehension skill are related in college students, and b) an assessment of meta-cognitive reading strategies

that is convenient to administer, which also demonstrates good psychometric qualities.

While knowledge of reading strategies may not be sufficient for the successful application of those strategies, it


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is a necessary component of skilled reading. It has been suggested that older and more sophisticated readers use

meta-cognitive strategies more often and more effectively than younger and poor readersmonitoring their

reading behavior and adjusting their reading purposes to facilitate understanding or remedy comprehension (for a

comprehensive review of such strategies, see Duke & Pearson, 2002; see also Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995).

Skilled readers know how to monitor and regulate the strategies that they know (Forrest-Pressley & Waller,

1984). Self-reported reading strategy inventories provide a means of tapping into readers awareness of the

strategies that make their reading experiences successful.

Self-reported reading strategy inventories are just one of a variety of methods for assessing strategy use.

Self-reported reading strategies are regarded as prospective meta-cognitive reports. Prospective reports refer to

measurements that are neither concurrent (i.e., think aloud) nor retrospective (i.e., recall; Cromley & Azevedo,

2006; Veenman, 2005). Prospective reports are a convenient way to assess readers awareness of strategies, but

they may be susceptible to confounding general knowledge of strategies with the perception of which strategies

are actually used. It has been suggested that think aloud protocols provide a valid means to disentangle the

knowledge of strategies from ones actual use of strategies; however, thinking aloud during reading disrupts the

natural process of reading. The next best alternative method of disentangling the knowledge of strategies from

their actual usage is to test whether self-perceptions of strategy use vary in a systematic fashion with reading

skill.

In this study we evaluated the validity and reliability of the meta-cognitive Awareness Reading Strategy

Inventory (MARSI; Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002). To achieve this research goal, we assessed the self-perceptions

of reading strategies within adult readers of varying skill levels. We also examined the relation between

self-reported reading ability, reading ability as assessed by a standardized measure, and college students

awareness of their reading strategies. Below we review several of the measures that have been designed to assess

college students. Based on this review, we selected MARSI for use in this study because it had a comprehensive

sampling of strategy types and preliminary construct validity. The goal of our study was to provide evidence for

the psychometric properties of the MARSI when used with the adult college population (Mokhtari & Reichard,

2002).

1.1 Current Meta-cognitive Assessments

Measurement of meta-cognitive knowledge is challenging. The majority of current meta-cognitive knowledge

measures are self-reports. Even though many measures have been developed, only a few exist which are

appropriate to use with adults. The documentation of psychometric properties (e.g., validity and reliability forinventories that assess the self-perceptions of reading strategies among college students) is scant within the

literature. The challenge has been the construction of an instrument that captures, along the same dimensions or

constructs, the differences between the many reading skill level groups of interest to researchers and practitioners

(e.g., young beginning readers, adult English language learners, more and less proficient secondary student

readers, college student readers, etc.). To date, only a few assessment instruments have been reported as

appropriate to use with college students (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002; Schraw &

Dennison, 1994; Taraban, Rynearson, & Kerr, 2004). Current inventories either have weak construct validity

when related with reading comprehension ability (Taraban et al., 2004) or are only cautiously advocated as

supplementary tools for reading instruction instead of as sufficient benchmarks of meta-cognitive strategy use

during reading (McLain, Gridley, & McIntosh, 1991; Miholic, 1994).

Our review of meta-cognitive measures begins with the measure that has the most extensive coverage of

strategies related to reading. We then cover measures that have made the assessment of meta-cognitive strategiesmore parsimonious. Schraw and Dennison (1994) constructed the most comprehensive instrument, a 52-item

inventory to measure adults meta-cognitive awareness. Items were classified into eight subcomponents

subsumed under two broader categories, knowledge of cognition (i.e., declarative knowledge, procedural

knowledge, conditional knowledge) and regulation of cognition (i.e., planning, information management,

monitoring, debugging, evaluation). The internal consistency of these eight subscales ranges from .93 to .88.

Although there is a statistically significant correlation between the knowledge and regulation of cognition, only

the knowledge of cognition factor was related to higher performance on reading tests (r= .20,p


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strategies that are used when text becomes difficult to read. The support factor reflects practical strategies like

taking notes and consulting a dictionary. The MARSI was designed for use with individuals or groups with

reading ability ranging from 5th grade to college level. The primary uses of the MARSI include the following: (a)

enhancing student awareness, (b) planning instruction, and (c) clinical or classroom research. To date the MARSI

has only been validated with a sample of students enrolled only in grades 6-12. More details on the psychometric

adequacy of MARSI are provided in a section to follow.

Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) developed the Survey of Reading Strategy (SORS), an adapted version of the

MARSI (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002) with minor adjustments to test the difference between non-native and

native English users of different reading abilities. SORS has three subscales: Cognitive (all 10 items belong to

MARSIs Global Reading Strategies factor), Meta-cognitive (12 items, including MARSIs 8 Problem-Solving

Strategies, 3 Global Reading Strategies, and 1 Support Reading Strategy) and Support Strategies (6 Support

Reading Strategies from the MARSI). They showed that higher reading ability students use more support

strategies. Both native and non-native higher reading ability students have higher reported meta-cognitive

reading strategies usage than their lower reading ability cohorts. A recent study (Anderson, 2006) demonstrated

that even though this measure was reliable with English as foreign language students (r = .79-.93), the

correlation with self-reports of reading ability was negligible (r= -.028).

The Meta-cognitive Reading Strategies Questionnaire (MRSQ) was developed by Taraban et al. (2004). The

MRSQ was designed as a 22 item self-report questionnaire to measure college students use of reading strategies

for comprehension and for studying while reading school related materials. Taraban et al. (2004) further explored

usage of different types of strategies among adults and determined that the MRSQ has a two-factor structure:

Analytic and Pragmatic (r= .25,p


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ability. The original validation sample was selected from participants who only were enrolled in grades as high

as 12 (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002). In addition, given the design of their study, there is no way to equate grade

enrollment with grade level reading ability or to determine ifExcellentas reported by an adolescent is the same

level asExcellentas reported by an adult.

Interestingly, Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002), however, suggested that with minor changes MARSI also is suitable

for use with non-native English speaking international university students. Mokhtari and Reichard (2004)

compared performance differences on the MARSI between native English speaking (L1) college freshmen and

L2 (English as a second language) college freshmen. Both groups of students provided self-reports of their

reading ability on a 1-5 Likert scale, which ranged from PoortoExcellent. The average score on the ACT was

reported for the L1 sample. Both L1 and L2 students had average self-reported reading ability levels that were in

the mid-range (3.6 and 3.4 respectively). Since the purpose of Mokhtari and Reichard (2004) was not to validate

the measure, only descriptive statistics were provided about the overall score and subscale scores on the MARSI

for both groups and differences between each groups endorsement of the individual items.

Overall, there currently is limited evidence to support the construct validity of MARSI. Construct validity

previously was verified using a self-report measure of reading ability to predict the frequency of strategies that

children and adolescents would report (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002); however, the relation between self-reported

reading ability and reading ability as assessed with a standardized test is not known. Even if there is a

relationship between self-reported reading ability and reading ability as assessed with a standardized test, it is not

known how this relationship changes with age.

1.3 Overview of the Current Study

Participants were chosen from the college student population, making our participants older and more advanced

readers than the participants used in the MARSIs original validation sample (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002).

Given the nature of this population, two hypotheses were proposed regarding the validity of the MARSI with

college students. Related to convergent validity, it was expected that we could replicate Mokhtari and Reichards

(2002) finding that reading ability is positively correlated with the frequency of usage of both Global Reading

and Problem-Solving Strategies. This hypothesis is motivated by the data that suggest that good comprehenders

or more sophisticated readers have more knowledge of meta-cognitive strategies than younger or poorer readers

(Baker & Brown, 1984a; Gambrell & Heathington, 1981). We also explored the relationship of MARSI to

reading comprehension skill as measured both by self-report and standardized reading assessments.

Related to construct validity more generally, it was hypothesized that the original factor structure of the MARSIwould replicate in our population. Quantitative methods (CFA) and qualitative analyses (pattern analysis) were

used to test the construct validity of the MARSI and explore a possible model to represent the nature of

meta-cognitive reading strategies in the college-attending adult population. Confirmatory factor analyses were

conducted using the MARSIs original three-factor structure. These analyses were aimed at determining whether

this original factor structure has a good fit or if a possible condensed structure of the inventory would better

represent the perceived meta-cognitive strategy usage of advanced readers.

2. Method

2.1 Participants

Participants (n=189) living in two Southeastern university communities in the U.S.A were recruited primarily

from college psychology and education courses. These communities included undergraduate and graduate

students who were attending either 2- or 4-year postsecondary institutions. The mean age of participants was 22years (range: 17-45 yrs.), and 68% of the participants were female. All of the participants were native speakers of

English. They were given either course credit or paid $10.00 for participation in the research study.

2.2 Study Instruments

2.2.1 Nelson-Denny Reading Comprehension Subtest (NDRT)

This NDRT subtest (Form H; Brown, Fishco, & Hanna, 1993) is a standardized reading comprehension test that

consists of seven prose passages and a total of 38 multiple choice questions, each with five answer choices. The

manual for the Nelson-Denny outlines two different types of administration criteria, standard administration and

extended time administration. We selected the Extended Time version so that readers comprehension would

be assessed without a speed component and students performance would reflect a purer form of reading

comprehension. The Extended Time version of the test allows 32 minutes for participants to complete the test.

Participants scores were computed by giving them one point for each item that they answered correctly. All raw


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scores were transformed to standard scores using the norms for Extended Time administration and 2-4 year

colleges or universities. The technical manual reported a Kuder-Richardson 20 raw-score reliability coefficient

of .81. Specific validity studies for Form H were not reported. Studies that have used earlier versions of the test

showed good predictive validity for academic success, with regression coefficients of .5 and above (Feldt, 1988).

2.2.2 Meta-cognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI)

The MARSI (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002) is a self-report, online questionnaire of meta-cognitive knowledge ofreading strategies. It contains 30 items, each of which describes briefly the reading situation and the

corresponding reading strategy to be applied, such as I have a purpose in mind when I read and I preview the

text to see what its about before reading it. Each strategy is in alignment with one of the three strategy

subcategories: Problem-Solving, Global Reading, and Support Reading Strategies. See Appendix A for a copy of

the original measure. Participants read the questions on a computer screen and clicked on the rating that best

described their use of each strategy. Each participant took approximately 10 to 12 minutes to complete the test.

Participants responses were scored for each subscale. Participants received a raw score for each item and a mean

score for each factor subscale. The mean for each factor subscale was computed by dividing the raw score by the

number of questions on a given subscale. Mean scores were divided into three pre-determined levels of strategy

use based on the criteria outlined by Mokhtari and Reichard (2002) for each factor subscale: high (3.5 and

above), medium (2.5 to 3.4), and low (2.4 and less). An overall score was calculated by summing the raw scores

across the subscales and dividing by 30. The overall score indicates how often participants use reading strategieswhen reading academic materials. The sub-score for each strategy subcategory indicates how often participants

use Problem-Solving, Global Reading, or Support Reading Strategies during academic reading.

2.2.3 Self-Reported Reading Ability Scale (SRRAS)

The authors designed a scale containing one self-report item that allowed participants to indicate their reading

ability level. This scale had 3 points: Below Average, Average, and Above Average. On the rating scale,

descriptions of how each of these points corresponded to the reading ability labels used by Mokhtari and

Reichard (2002) were indicated in parentheses. Below Average corresponded to Not So Good reading ability.

Average corresponded to Average reading ability. Above Average corresponded to Excellent reading ability.

Participants placed a check mark by the level that they thought best reflected their reading skill level.

2.3 Procedure

Each participant was administered the NDRT followed by the MARSI. The MARSI was completed using apersonal computer with access to the Internet. Data were collected using Flashlight (Washington State

University Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, 1998-2006), a web-based system for creating surveys,

gathering responses, and analyzing data. Instructions were provided within Flashlight. The MARSI questions

were administered in the order suggested by the instruments authors (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002). Participants

from one university community were individually administered the tests and participants from the other

university were administered the test in small groups ranging from two to ten persons.

3. Results

3.1 Preliminary Analyses

3.1.1 Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics for the entire sample and for each measure that was used in the study.

The ratio of sample size to item number was 6.3. To test whether the distribution of scores on each measurewithin our sample deviated from normal and to determine if there was a ceiling effect, skewness and kurtosis

values were examined. The skewness value of -.04 (SEM =.18) and the kurtosis value of .23 (SEM =.35)

indicated a relatively normal distribution on the MARSI. In contrast, a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality

revealed that the negative skewness value of - .88 (SEM=.18) was significant for the NDRT,K-S= 1.78,p=.004.

The kurtosis value of .74 (SEM=.35) was normal. Given that statistically significant skewness often does not

make a substantial difference in analyses with large samples (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996), we decided not to

transform the NDRT scores. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality also revealed that the negative kurtosis

value of -.77 (SEM=.60) was significant for the SSRAS,K-S= 2.86,p=.001. The skewness value of .04 (SEM

=.30) was normal. Only two participants rated themselves as Below Average readers. Thus, the Below Average

andAverage categories were combined, and self-reported reading ability was treated as a dichotomous variable.

It was important for us to examine the relation between self-report reading ability ratings and reading scores

obtained from a standardized comprehension measure since there have not been any studies to demonstrate this


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relation to date. We observed a statistically significant relationship between the SRRAS and the NDRT. These

two measures were positively correlated (r=.33). College students with lower standardized scores rate

themselves as Below Average/Average readers and college students with higher standardized reading scores rate

themselves asAbove Average readers.

We also tested to see whether our mean scores on the MARSI and the MARSI subscales were different from the

other reported means for adults (see Table 1). The overall mean on the MARSI (3.38 out of 5), the Global

Reading Strategies subscale mean (3.43 out of 5), and the Problem-Solving Strategies subscale mean (3.34 out of

5) were greater than the means reported by Mokhtari and Reichard (2004), t(328)=2.33, p=.02; t(328)=3.27,

p


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conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses to further test the validity of the measure in a college sample.

There are several rules of thumb for determining the adequacy of sample size for computing CFAs (DeCoster,

1998). Three separate CFAs were computed using structural equation modeling with the AMOS5.0 software

(Arbuckle, 2003). The first model tested the independence of the three subscales (see Figure 1).

There were no-cross loadings in this model. This first CFA yielded a poor fit, 2 (402) = 927.9, p


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Our data also do not support Mokhtari and Reichards (2002) findings that the frequency of usage of both Global

Reading Strategies and Problem-Solving Strategies increased between readers who were at the upper end of the

ability continuum and readers who are in the middle of the continuum. We only found significant differences

between these two groups of readers on the Global Reading subscale of the MARSI when reading ability was

assessed using the standardized reading test. The current sample differed from the MARSIs original validation

sample in several ways. The current sample was significantly smaller, and these two samples might be

representative of two different sample populations (n=189 and n= 825, respectively). The original validationsample consisted of readers in grades 6-12, with no standardized assessment of grade level reading ability

indicated. The grade level equivalents on the Nelson Denny Reading Comprehension Subtest were two years

beyond the actual grade levels in which students from the original MARSI validation sample were enrolled. Our

findings suggest that once an individual reaches the upper end of the reading ability continuum their perceptions

of the frequency of the usage of certain strategies may change.

In addition, the fact that neither measure of reading ability was correlated with the overall MARSI challenges its

validity in college students (Pressley & Ghatala, 1990; Swanson, 1990). It is promising, however, that the Global

Reading and Problem-Solving Strategies subscale scores were correlated with the NDRT and that the magnitude

of the correlation between the Global Reading subscale and the SRRAS was equivalent to the magnitude of the

correlation between the Global Reading subscale and NDRT (although not significant).

Though the MARSI was selected for this study because it had a comprehensive sampling of strategy types and

preliminary construct validity, several confirmatory factory analyses were unsuccessfully able to replicate the

MARSIs original factor structure within a population of proficient adult readers. We also observed moderate

inter-correlations between the Global Reading and Problem-Solving Strategies subscales and between the

Problem-Solving and Support Reading Strategies subscales in our college student sample. These

inter-correlations were higher than the correlations reported by Mokhtari and Reichard (2002). This pattern

brings into question the discriminant validity among subscales for the adult college population. Our sample size

(n=189), however, was less than the several hundred that is recommended.

Our data, nonetheless, suggest that the Meta-cognitive Awareness Reading Strategy Inventory (Mokhtari &

Reichard, 2002; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002) may not be appropriate for use with adult college readers (i.e., grade

level equivalents beyond 12th grade) in its current format. Even though this inventory has been shown to be

valid and reliable for 6-12th graders, when the target population changes we have demonstrated that patterns of

responding on the MARSI changes. Therefore, further investigation also is needed to verify whether the MARSI

is appropriate to use with adult L2 learners as suggested by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002). Given that the usage

of the MARSI with adult readers is called into question by the current findings, extensive usage of the MARSI

for assessing adult L2 learners is cautioned until the factor structure has been validated in L1 adults. While it is

possible that adult L2 learners may have reading ability levels that are comparable to the reading ability levels of

the students in the MARSIs validation sample, the actual construct nature of L2s meta-cognitive reading

strategy use has yet to be accurately identified.

There are, nevertheless, several plausible alternative explanations for the poor validity evidence obtained on the

MARSI in our adult sample besides adopting the conclusion that the MARSI does not have good measurement

quality. Some have argued that students use strategies to a different extent in different contexts, even in academic

reading, and that context-free measures do not accurately reflect strategy use for any of those contexts (e.g.,

Hadwin et al., 2001). On the other hand, Cromley and Azevedo (2006) argue that high comprehending students

may be systematically under-estimating and low-comprehending students systematically overestimating their use

of the strategies on the MARSI measure, which may account for the lack of relationship between self-report andreading comprehension measures.

We should also point out the limitations of our study. One of the limitations of the current study includes the

usage of NDRT Form H, as the NDRT Form H developed by Brown, Fishco, and Hanna (1993) had any

validation indices. Another limitation of the current study is that we did not collect data to evaluate the test-retest

reliability of the MARSI inventory. These issues could be addressed in future research. Future research with a

larger sample so that additional factor structures can be tested is also advised.

Call for a theoretically sound, population-adjustable and construct-transparent measure of meta-cognitive

reading strategies is urgent. Various types of research methodologies besides a self-report questionnaire would be

complementary to each other. Direct observations during academic functioning (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons,

1988) and self-recall (Taraban et al., 2004), to name a few, could provide educators and researchers with

additional criteria of construct validity to draw a comprehensive perspective of meta-cognitive strategy


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knowledge and usage. Other areas for future research include developmental issues related to meta-cognition,

reading goals, and language proficiency.

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Table 1. Descriptive statistics

Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error

NDRC 219.09 20.89 1.52

SRRAS 1.34 .54 .07

MARSI OVERALL 3.38 (3.25) .51 (.49) .04

GLOB 3.43 (3.23) .57 (.52) .04

PS 3.43 (3.10) .56 (.60) .04

SUP 2.92 (3.39) .58 (.68) .05

Note. NDRC= Nelson Denny Reading Comprehension Test; SRRAS= Self-Report Reading Assessment Scale;

GLOB=global; PS=problem-solving; SUP=support. Mokhtari & Reichard (2004) values in parentheses.


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Table 2. Inter-correlations between Meta-cognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI),

Self-Report Reading Ability Scale (SRRAS) andNelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT)

MARSI

Overall

Global

Reading

Strategies

Problem

Solving

Strategies

Support

Reading

Strategies

NDRT SSRAS

MARSI

Overall

1 -- -- -- -- --

MARSI

Global

.89** 1 -- -- -- --

MARSI

Problem

Solving

.83** .69** (.20) 1 -- -- --

MARSI

Support

.80** .56** (.73) .51** (.09) 1 -- --

NDRT .13 .19**

.15*

-.03 1

SRRAS .12 .24 -.02 .00 .33** 1

Note. =p


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Table 5. Confirmatory factor analysis

Inventory Item Global ProblemSolving

Support

Item 1 I have a purpose in mind when I read. .42 (.639)

Item 3 I think about what I know to help me understand what I amreading.

.42(.418) (.404)

Item 4 I preview the text to see what its about before reading it. .31(.470)

Item 7 I think about whether the content of the text fits my purpose. .42(.597)

Item 10 I skim the text first by noting characteristics like lengths andorganization.

.55(.640)

Item 14 I decide what to read closely and what to ignore. .28(.582)

Item 17 I use tables, figures, and pictures in text to increase myunderstanding.

.43(.385)

Item 19 I use context clues to help me better understand what Imreading.

.36(.407)

Item 22 I use typographical aids like boldface type and italics toidentify key information.

.41(.425)

Item 23 I critically analyze and evaluate the information presented inthe text.

.52(.308) (.354)

Item 25 I check my understanding when I come across conflictinginformation.

.64(.352) (.325)

Item 26 I try to guess what the text is about when reading. .43(.373) (.303)

Item 29 I check to see if my guesses about the text are right or wrong. .42(.389)

Item 8 I read slowly but carefully to be sure I understand what Imreading.

.57(.454)

Item 11 I try to get back on track when I lose concentration. .50(.679)

Item 13 I adjust my reading speed according to what Im reading. .51(.512)

Item 16 When text becomes difficult, I begin to pay closer attention towhat Im reading.

.61(.553)

Item 18 I stop from time to time to think about what Im reading. .69(.605)

Item 21 I try to picture or visualize information to help me rememberwhat Im reading.

.49(.632)

Item 27 When text becomes difficult, I reread to increase myunderstanding.

.59(.634)

Item 30 I try to guess the meaning of unknown words or phrases. .32(.533)

Item 2 I take notes while reading to help me understanding what Imreading.

.54(.728)

Item 5 When text becomes difficult, I read aloud to help meunderstanding what Im reading.

(.375) .29(.375)

Item 6 I write summaries to reflect on key ideas in the text. .57(.773)

Item 9 I discuss my reading with others to check my understanding. .50(.573)

Item 12 I underline or circle information in the text to help meremember it.

.52(.616)

Item 15 I use reference materials such as dictionaries to help meunderstanding what Im reading.

.32(.493)

Item 20 I paraphrase (restate ideas in my own words) to betterunderstand what Im reading.

.56(.526)

Item 24 I go back and forth in the text to find relationships amongideas in it.

.67(.511)

Item 28 I ask myself questions I like to have answered in the text. .50(.510)

Note. Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) values are in parentheses.


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Figure 1. Path Diagram of MARSI: A model with three factors equivalent to the GLOBAL, PROBLEM

SOLVING, and SUPPORT, with 13, 8 and 9 observed indicators for each latent variable


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Figure 2. Path Diagram of MARSI with cross loading effect: A model with three factors equivalent to the

GLOBAL, PROBLEM SOLVING, and SUPPORT subscales, with 13, 9 and 10 observed indicators for each

latent variable


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Appendix A

Note. This figure is reprinted from Assessing students metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, by K.Mokhtari and C.A. Reichard, 2002, Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, p. 258. Copyright 2002 by the

American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.

Psychometric Properties of Metacognitive Awarness of Reading Strategy Inventory MARSI.pdf

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